I am fearful of writing anything about Lucy's current situation, lest it change immediately hereafter, but here's what's going on:

Last Friday we saw Dr. Christine and due to another failure of the sutures holding Lucy's feeding tube in place, she suggested that we remove the tube. Kimberly and Dr. Christine and I talked it over a bit and ultimately decided the timing was bad, since it offered the possibility of us spending a week of trying to get Lucy to eat, and then making a hard decision that would exactly coincide with my departure. So instead Dr. Christine gave up her lunch on Friday and stitched the tube back in for Lucy. The plan was to continue palliative care over the next three weeks and then pull the tube upon my return.

But then we had a long three-day weekend that were led by Lucy entirely refusing to eat for 28 or so hours following that mini-surgery and the sedative. We were initially certain that we were just done, but even after Lucy started eating a day and a half after her sutures were resown, we really weren't certain of the viability of keeping this going for three weeks. Among other things, we were afraid that she was just going to pop the sutures again because she was scratching insistently and we'd been told the skin around Lucy's stoma was getting increasingly weak.

To give us some more info, we graphed out all of the data we had on Lucy's eating, which was a daily record (with just a few days missing here and there) that dated back to the end of May. The main thing that it showed was that Lucy hadn't eaten great since her crash that started around July 20th. There had been some improvement starting in late August, but it had peaked at her eating maybe two-thirds of what we offered her, as compared to weeks of perfect eating before the July crash.

We were able to see some potential correlation here and there. For example, we have no idea why she crashed when we took her to Oahu way back in June, but it looked to us like the recovery from that was due to an increase in anti-nausea drugs. Further, I'd been long certain that her improvement in early July had been due to an increase in steroids, but the crash afterward had always been mysterious. Now it seemed more likely that it was a first sign of the infection we started treating weeks later.

Maybe. It's all maybe. That's what has made what Kimberly calls "the rollercoaster" so frustrating.

Anyway, the most important part of all of this was that it got Kimberly and me really talking, and we were able to come to the conclusion that she was more comfortable taking Lucy in to the vet to be put to sleep on her own, if that was necessary while I was gone, than she was continuing palliative care that she now felt was useless.

So we bugged our vet on Tuesday, after Labor Day was over, and Dr. Christine gave up her lunch (again), this time to remove Lucy's tube entirely. At the same time, Lucy came off of the continuing antibiotics we were giving her to try and stave off infection during this palliative period and we also put her prednisolone back up. All told, we felt like that gave her the best chance of eating, as we'd had her on the chemotherapy long enough that we expected to see results (if there were any to be seen), we'd be restoring the pred which was the next (last) thing on the TODO list, and also we'd be taking away the antibiotics and for that matter the tube that might be deterring eating. But we didn't expect much, especially after seeing how poor her "improved" eating had been in recent weeks, compared to earlier periods in the crisis.

And after she got home from the vet, Lucy begged for food, and when we gave it to her she ate it all, with some encouragement. (That mainly means letting her walk off after half a plate, waiting for her to return, then offering her the plate again under different circumstances. That day, I think I did it in her cat carrier, one of her "safe" places that she feels more comfortable finishing food.)

This pattern has generally continued. Poor eating in the morning (which is the norm), and then mostly full meals at lunch and dinner, though mostly with encouragement, returning her to eat one time. It's not sustainable, but for the moment it's food while we try to restore the eating habit.

Lucy got 225 kCal of food on Tuesday, though she was tube fed in the morning before the tube was removed. She got 200 kCal yesterday, all on her own. Our estimate is that she needs 150-180 kCal at her current weight, but that 120-150 kCal would leave her at a bit more normative weight.

So we are EXTREMELY cautiously maybe-optimistic that the chemotherapy we've given her has actually done some good and Lucy might be back on her feed. But we are well aware not only that she's crashed two or three times previously amidst this, but also that this could just be the novelty of having the annoying tube out of her neck. So, this is a very fragile maybe-optimism, and I'm not sure we think there's a great chance yet that things will turn out well. But we haven't even seen a response to the increased prednisilone yet, which took about 3 days last time, and thus puts us to tomorrow night.

Mind you, we do have a downside to all of this: medication application. I'd been giving Lucy pred pills for, I dunno, maybe a year before all of this. Pill pockets didn't work. Compounded treats didn't work. So it was pilling, mostly with a shooter. Some nights it was over in a flash. And other nights there were 5-10 minutes of growling, flailing, and spitting out pills (mostly on Lucy's part, not mine).

And now I've got three pills to give in the morning, which is one more than I could fit in my classic pill shooter (and a new one I picked up on Tuesday that's bigger doesn't seem to work as well for us), and two in the evening. So that's been unpleasant. But if the eating continues, we can combine the pred pills to just one in the morning and hopefully wean her off the anti-nausea. That would put us back to the one long-term pill which is fine.

But we also have chemotherapy liquid twice a week, and that's less fine. We haven't tried to administer it orally yet, but that's on our list for later today, so fingers crossed. It's a carcinogen and can cause allergic reactions, so we have to be very careful of it, and Lucy has a habit of spitting up oral meds.

So that's where things are. Lucy has no tube. Lucy is eating. Lucy will get her collar off tomorrow when her stoma is closed up. But, we don't know if we have a long-term solution or not. I don't know if my kitty will still be around by the time I'm back from Germany. But it feels much better than leaving Kimberly with a cat who was either being tube fed or just not eating.

We've done our best. If Lucy actually keeps eating, every day we have from here on is a blessing, and if not, these last days still were.

BACK TO THE VET

Kimberly noticed some white fluid on Lucy's stoma the last two nights, and so Lucy was called back to the vet today for an emergency dropoff. She indeed seems to have pus in her wound again, which means infection. (Really, that the infection never fully cleared up, since we saw it the night we gave her her last dose in the morning.)

So Lucy's back on antibiotics, for what we all pretty much agree is one last try. We're going to monitor her eating, which has improved a little bit the last few days (a third of a plate at meals recently, but two-thirds for lunch today), but which we expect to get worse with the antibiotic.

Other than the continually incorrect diagnoses, and the ups and downs, that's the most frustrating thing. We're actively working against ourself, trying to get her eating by giving her meds (chemotherapy, antibiotics) that are likely to mess with her eating.

If the antibiotics fail, or if they succeed but then the infection returns immediately afterward, then we'll have to decide whether to take her tube out and give her a last few days to eat without all of the things that might be discouraging her eating (which includes the tube) ... or not.

And with a week of new antibiotics, that'll put me to just more than a week before my trip, which is horrible timing.

IT'S ALL RELATIVE

I've been so caught up with Lucy that I didn't even write about my sister & fam visiting. They showed up a week and a half ago and stayed with my dad and Mary through yesterday.

We got to see them a few times. Melody, Jared, and little Audrey, who is definitely much more active than last year.

We had our normal Sunday visits, and Jared joined us for gaming, which was cool.

We met them at Hanapepe Art Night on Friday and found it much less touristy than last year. I think maybe more locals are out (there were definitely more food trucks!) than was the case in the summer of 2022, and so the feeling has changed. The more food trucks was also great. Kimberly and I both ended up getting a terrific Portuguese bean soup (and OK Mac & Cheese). It made me actually interested in visiting Art Night occasionally when my 2022 experience was the opposite (other than the great company, of course).

We also went out with them to see the Barbie Movie on Sunday. Absolutely amazing. I can't imagine how it got made in the modern Hollywood model, let alone for a licensed product that I would have guessed had hyper-protective owners. But such great societal commentary. Such extensive humor. Such a great 80s Music VIdeo (for "I Am Ken"). Such great music in general. Such great directing and writing. Wow. It had better be winning a lot of awards.

A BAD DAY FOR LUCY-LIU

Lucy has a stoma in her neck, where her feeding tube emerges. Every two days (or occasionally two and a half) we take off her collar to get at her stoma, clean it, and then put a fresh pad up against the wound.

Yesterday night we went to clean it and Kimberly noted that there was black ichorous fluid and we both noticed that it had an unpleasant smell. Not good, obviously.

So Lucy was into the vet today. They've diagnosed her with cellulitis, which is a deep infection of the skin around her stoma. We've got her on some new antibiotics now for the next week, with the hope that'll help clear things up. If not, they'll need to take out the feeding tube, which obviously would be very bad as she's very much not eating at the moment.

Lucy apparently gave them quite some trouble at the vet when they tried to get her stoma all cleared up. They said they tried it some in the morning and she was very uncooperative, so they tried again in the afternoon and when she'd still have none of it, they gave her some sedative.

So we've got a cat that's still very high at the moment, just randomly running after things that aren't there.

We're continuing with the chemotherapy. We gave Lucy her fourth dose after she got back from the vet today. By next week, I believe, if it's not working we'll try upping the steroid again (while continuing the chemotherapy). But even moreso than before we're working against the clock.

So, we have our fingers crossed, but things aren't looking good for our long-time companion at the moment.

THINGS I LEARNED AT THE DENTIST

Just one thing, really. It turns out that Hawaii doesn't have fluoride in its water. I was quite shocked, having lived the majority of my life in the California Bay Area, which does. I assumed it was a national thing, since the fluoridation of our water supply has been touted as one of the biggest health advances of the 20th century. But nope, Hawaii is #51 on the list of the 50 states (and DC) for fluoridation level. Apparently 10% of the water in the state is fluoridated.

(Waiting to see if there are any anti-fluoridation conspiracy fantasists to block after this post.)

The context is unfortunately some small cavities that turned up at my dental appointment on Monday. My dentist had turned them up last year and put "watches" on them, hoping that they'd improve, but they instead got bigger. It turns out this is a somewhat frequent problem when someone moves from California (or somewhere else with properly fluoridated water) to Hawaii.

Things you never knew.

So I annoyingly am going to have to make some return visits to the dentist to deal with cavities. And I'm swapped out my normal toothpaste for one with fluoride and also gotten a high-fluoride prescription toothpaste for use at night.

SLEEPING WITH THE ORANGIES

I slept in the Guest Room last night because Kimberly had some standard medical testing that she needed to get ready for in the middle of the night. This is Kimberly's Office, where we kept the orangies locked up for their first days with us, and where we still locked them every night for months. I used to sleep with them there every other night, to help get them socialized and fond of us.

So last night I washed the sheets and made out the bed, and was surprised the orangies weren't more excited. But then when I went to lay down last night, Elmer suddenly let out two pterodactyl-like mews and RACED into the bed. He was clearly SO thrilled.

Elmer slept with me all night, occasionally waking me by getting in my face and begging me for pets. Mango came to visit from time to time. There was at least once when I woke up and was surprised to find two little cats pressed up against me.

When I woke up and went for a shower way too early this morning, I found poor Lucy sitting on the edge of the bed in the Master Bedroom, clearly still waiting for me to go to sleep.

THE LUCY UPDATE

Speaking of Lucy, she again is eating better.

When last we saw the vet, last Thursday, she acknowledged that the antibiotic was likely not helping, agreeing with the internist's theory that it wasn't a gall bladder infection after all. So last Friday we started her on the next step, which was an increase in her steroid to start trying to deal with any ongoing inflammation.

On Sunday (which was also Lucy's last day of the antibiotic, meaning it was still at full strength), Lucy started eating well again at lunch and dinner. That's continued every day since.

So, we don't know what to make of that, and honestly I'm not sure I have a lot of hope because Lucy keeps pulling the football out from in front of us. (That's metaphorical Lucy, not real Lucy.) This will be the third time Lucy has started eating well during this ordeal, once for a week, once for a week and a half. I mean, we certainly hope this is it, but it's been such a long mess.

Next week we'll start weaning her off anti-nausea meds, and see how that goes. Moving from anti-nausea meds seems to have precipitated each of the previous collapses, but who knows, it's hard to find causality in any of this.

LUCY GROWLS

A funny little tidbit: one evening, Elmer started yowling downstairs, as cats do. So I called out "EL-MER!" to let him know we were upstairs and he should come visit us, as cat owners do.

And Lucy GROWLED.

What's up with that? I thought. And continued on.

But a few minutes later, Elmer cried out again, I called out his name. AND ANOTHER GROWL.

I'm looking at Lucy funny at this point, and I try experimentally, "EL-MER!?"

Growl!

She was genuinely growling every time she heard his name!

Now Lucy doesn't like either orangie, but I think she really doesn't like Elmer, because sometimes he gets aggressive enough not just to *get* her, but to *get* her and make her retreat. But I was astounded that she knew his name and offered her opinion.

(I've repeated the experiment since on other days with no reaction, but not too much because I don't want to upset Lucy by shouting out Elmer's name!)

LAPTOP WOES

Funny situation with my laptop. It stopped charging correctly when connected to my UPS. It was right after a blackout, so I figured something had happened to the UPS.

But I moved it to a counter in the mud room, and it worked fine.

Weird. And then it didn't charge in the mud room one day.

I finally figured out that my MagSafe cord was the problem. I replaced that with a (slow charging) USB-C/Thunderbolt cord and all is well again.

So what happened to the MagSafe cord? It's a braided cord, which makes them hard to destroy, but looking at it carefully I saw that bits of braid were pulled out here and there, like pulls in a sweater.

So I'm pretty sure a little Elmer kitty was getting it, hopefully some time ago when he was smaller and really bad at getting cords.

And I think it didn't work when connected to the UPS because it was hanging vertically and putting weight on the cord, whereas on the counter it was laying horizontally.

But weird to figure out.

New MagSafe cord ordered. And I made sure to get an original from Apple, not a knockoff, so that I know it's well-braided and less likely to electrocute a gnawing cat (though he doesn't seem to do that nearly as much!)

THE ONCOMING STORM

We had a tropical storm whiz by the islands yesterday. It apparently caused some rain on The Big Island. On Kauai we had some deep overcast, but the rain that constantly seemed to be oncoming rarely materialized.

Supposed to be a high hurricane season. We'll see how it goes.

HOSPITAL PARKING

When I dropped Kimberly off for her procedure this morning at the hospital we were somewhat bemused to see that the first few rows of parking nearing same-day surgery are all marked "physician". The patients have to park in the back half of the third row or further. (We'd never noticed before because previously we'd used disabled spaces because of Kimberly's problems walking for several years.)

As K. said, "So the healthy physicians park close and the sick patients park further out?"

THE ONCOMING TRIP

I figured out my itinerary for my trip to Germany in September and sent it off to the workshop folks for approval.

I've been reluctant to pull the trigger on that in part because it's a real pain finding my way to Europe and back. (The way back is the hardest, since I do that in one gulp, so on the way back from The Netherlands I could only find two itineraries that got me back home in a day, this time I could only find one, and it has two layovers.)

But, I've also been reluctant because of Lucy's condition. Yes, that's almost two months away, but we're also two months into this.

In any case, I'm ready to buy my tickets at this point, and then search up housing. Hoping to find a nice Air B&B for the majority of the trip, and then I'll stay at the airport hotel the last night, since the airport is over an hour from the venue, by train.

Busy, busy!

When we saw our vet with Lucy last Friday, we talked about the fact that we still had an appointment with the Oahu internist today, and needed to decide whether to cancel it. Because Lucy was still on the tailend of not seeming great after the previous weekend's drama, our vet at first suggested we might want to take Lucy to Oahu, but then after consulting with a colleague, simply suggested that we talk with the internist if and only if we were able to acquire a phone appointment.

So Kimberly put in the work playing phone tag with people at VERC in Oahu and finally got word back that the internist was willing to do a phone appointment.

As Lucy did better and better from Friday on, increasingly eating huge amounts of food (often approaching 240 kCals when our goal is 150-180 a day) and jumping up to get it and generally showing more energy as she climbed up and down cat trees, we were uncertain of the utility of the appointment. But, we respected our vet's request for that second opinion, we remembered the week of good eating before the downturn that resulted in our trip to Oahu (though we now attribute that, right or wrong, to taking Lucy off anti-nausea drugs), and we decided we didn't want to inadvertently burn bridges with VERC by cancelling very late (but still outside of their 24-hour limit).

So we did that today as a brief (45-minute!) interruption to my work day.

It was not the happiest phone call we've had lately.

First up, I don't think there was an internist in the office when we took Lucy in. Which was our WHOLE POINT in taking her out to Oahu. But Dr. S. idly mentioned that she'd been out at the time due to familial obligations. I mean we felt like we got good care at VERC, including a diagnosis, but ...

Second, on that diagnosis ... Dr. S is unconvinced. She says that the ultrasound wasn't actually defining for liver infection and she says that it's less likely because of something about liver enzymes and the lack of a high white blood cell count. The only thing that makes her think maybe is that Lucy threw up the night things went bad, and that can apparently "shower" the liver with bad juju. So, she places the odds at 50/50 that what we're doing is right and will result in a well kitty. (Man, that is is a far cry from the "very certain" response we got from Dr. C at the clinic when we asked about how strongly he felt about the diagnosis.)

She says that if Lucy has a relapse or if we finish up the course of antibiotics and she's still not eating, then the odds are it's either Inflammatory Bowel Disease or Small Cell Lymphoma, which are both intestinal diseases and could fit with the fact that Lucy has had various intestinal problems her whole life.

At that point we'd most likely put her on Chlorambucil, which is a chemotherapy drug (I think one that we'd previously given to Cobweb, many moons ago, when they incorrectly diagnosed her with cancer) and see if that does the job. With the other option being a trip out to Oahu for an endoscopic biopsy to verify what's going on. (Well, maybe, apparently it can be hard to get great results with endoscopic, but that's all they'd suggest for a cat Lucy's age.) Dr. S. says that a biopsy is the gold standard, but really seemed to stop short of explicitly saying we should do it.

So, ugh.

We'd increasingly thought we were on the right track, especially with Lucy's improvement these last several days. So to learn that we could EASILY finish out another month of this and have a sick cat again and be not quite back where we started was ... disheartening.

Our vet is supposed to get a report on all of this, but I haven't seen a copy of it yet.

And for now all we can do is wait and see how things go.

We tried to get the cats a new cat tree for Christmas. That's because the Amazon cat tree I'd gotten for Lucy and Callisto when we moved out here had gotten pretty rickety, courtesy of its screw-and-cylinder design.

So I searched high and low for a solid cat tree like the (ragged but not rickety) one that we'd gotten from Costco right after we moved. Petco was the best place that I could find, which sent me running out to the Petco on island, but they only had smaller ones. No problem, petco.com was the first place I found that would let me order a large, solid cat tree to Hawaii. So I did that about three weeks before Christmas.

One week before Christmas, Petco abruptly cancelled the order. No explanation. No apology. Just a cancellation and (a few days later) a refund of our money.

Merry Christmas.

(I assume the problem was the island shipping, but you'd think a website would automatically deal with that sort of thing, and if not you'd at least get a letter.)

So the cats didn't get a cat tree for Christmas and I decided there was no way to get a large, solid cat tree on island, other than a Costco Miracle or an expensive freight forwarding service.

(I looked at it: a few hundred extra dollars to get a cat tree here.)

Sometime this year I decided to go ahead and just get a new build it yourself cylinders-and-screws model. I mean, it'll probably get rickety eventually, but the orangies have also entirely mauled the nice Costco one, so that stuff falls off whenever it's moved, so maybe the rickety ones are just as good for a few years.

And that cat tree sat in a browser window for months, because it's been that kind of year.
I finally ordered it a few weeks ago and got it today. An hour or so of assembly later .... it's mostly up.

I still need to clean up the area where it's going to go, because there's too much stuff jammed in there. (Mostly boxes of games from the still not finished shelf assembly.) And they did not give me one bolt in the proper size, so I can't safely attach the top section until they either send me a replacement or I see if my dad has a tool to chop down a bolt. (The one they gave me was 10mm too long, and so it sticks out and could impale a cat.)

Anyway, fun times. The cat helped lots.

THE DIAGNOSIS. Last night they said Lucy probably had "EHBO", which is a gall bladder obstruction possibly caused by infection. Today, after the results were reviewed by a second doctor, they just said "gall bladder infection". I asked the doctor and he said he was confident on the diagnosis.
So, hopefully we have an answer.

Lucy picked up an infection in her gall bladder, probably related to her lifetime of problems with her intestinal track (which we treat with steroids). And the local vet presumably doesn't have an ultrasound that they could use to diagnosis it (and the emergency hospital said you *had* to have an ultrasound to see it).

Lucy has also been started in antibiotics that are good at penetrating the liver, which should hopefully help her clear the liver infection. However, because things move through the gall bladder very slowly, they say it can take six weeks to resolve the problem,.

So, we'll probably be maintaining her feeding tube through the middle of July, because the new antibiotic is liquid, and it's a *REAL* challenge to get Lucy to not spit out half of her liquid medicine (from experience).

Fingers crossed that we have a cat on the mend, even if it'll take a while.

THE TRIP. Overall, this was a very stressful trip out to Oahu. We did have some good rest in the hotel last night (which was the Aqua Palms, where I've rented personally owned rooms through AirBnB in the past).

Then this morning, I actually put in half-a-day of work while while Kimberly went off to see a friend.

But from there, stress starting to ramp up again.

We walked out to Ala Moana center for lunch, and that was further than K. was really up to, so it was a tough walk.

We had OK lunch at the Ala Moana food court, but the whole place was as chaotic of a mess as ever, with no free tables because 1 in 6 tables or so was being blocked up by people who grabbed tables because they were so scarce while their family went and got food (which is a bad behavior that drives me crazy, because there often is ONLY a problem with seating BECAUSE of people engaging in this bad behavior).

And then because we still hadn't heard from the vet and it was getting on to 2pm and we had nowhere else to go really, we went back to the vet hospital.

And learned they'd tried to call us a few times with no success! What the heck! We were in the Ala Moana dungeon, but my phone doesn't even report any incoming calls. *)@(#$@#.

And apparently the poor doctor had been stressed too because he hadn't been able to talk to us!
Anyway, that was all resolved, and we picked up Lucy and got the final diagnosis as I wrote.

THE TRIP HOME. The next question was what airplane we could safely book. We were told we should have Lucy at around 3.15, and I had to decide between 5.30 and 7.15 flights. 5.30 felt just a bit tight to me but I didn't want to wait another two hours and get home very late with a full day of work ahead of me tomorrow.

So 5.30 it was.

Except we got Lucy back and she and the carrier smelled of pee. Apparently just after she had her catheter out, she had an accident in the carrier!

I was worried about being kept off the plane!

Fortunately I'd brought a second cushion for her carrier for this exact situation.

And the vet techs helped us clean her up until she got too unruly. We ended up with a better smelling carrier and a cat that smells a bit like pee and a bit like perfume. (Poor baby!)

That took us to about 3.30, but we were at the airport by 3.50 and the whole lobby was almost entirely empty. A very nice clerk helped us get Lucy (and us) checked-in. And then when we took her to the TSA, on the Pre side, the TSA staff practically cheered her through.

Everyone loves Lucy out here on Oahu!

We were to the gate by 4.00, so apparently Honolulu (which has been *CRAZY* some times I've been here) isn't that big of a deal as you get to the evening.

We've been here 40 minutes already and our plane won't be boarding for 20 more.
45 minute flight home. Drive-thru at Taco Bell. Hopefully rush hour traffic has cleared. And we're home!

We'll all be very happy because this was super-duper exhausting and stressful.
(Slept very good last night though! Apparently I knew Lucy was in good hands.)

AND A WEEK AFTER THAT

So Lucy had a good week. On Sunday afternoon she just suddenly started eating pretty well. Every afternoon and evening from Sunday on we've put down a third of a plate of her A/D Urgent Care food and she's eaten it. Admittedly, sometimes we had to coax her to finish, but she did.

Oh, and we ran out of anti-nausea pills yesterday morning, so we decided to see if her nausea (if there ever was any) had gone away. And we are now hopefully optimistic about that too, because she continued eating fine (perhaps even better) afterward.

We've still been tube feeding her in the morning, because she hasn't been interested in food then, and doing so makes sure her nutrition gets off to a good start, but this morning for the first time she tucked into breakfast. We only tube fed her (the last bit) because we'd already crushed up a pill to give her.

So, that's great progress and with five and a half days behind us, things could still turn around (in the wrong direction), but if things are still going this well next week we can get her tube taken out.

Mind you, we're still having to actively put food out for Lucy three times a day, and she's still not really eating her old dry food and we haven't figured out a way to get her new (Senior) dry food separate from the orangies, except by occasionally putting it out under supervision. So even if she really is doing better, there's another step where she tends to return to more sustainable eating patterns.

But, yay.

Unfortunately, Lucy's continuing to obsessively scratch at her color and whip her head around and Wednesday we started noticing her tube sliding in and out a considerable amount. Which freaked me out. Thursday I managed to secure it a little better with a tie around the collar, and then she was in at the vet today for what's been her weekly check-in.

Surprise! She'd managed to rip out the suture that was supposed to keep her tube in place.

(Not a surprise!)

So Lucy had a minor surgery this evening to put in TWO SUTURES to keep her feeding tube in place. And she got drugged up for it, so she's been kind of stumbling around the house this evening.

And worrying at her collar.

Hopefully the two sutures are stronger than she is.

Anyway, fingers crossed that things continue on the upswing and we have a cat heading back to healthiness.

Lucy's health has been up and down, but mostly down. We had her in at the vet on Monday, and since she wasn't seeming any better we got subcutaneous fluids and anti-nausea drugs to give her.

And then after two days of that she was seriously perked up. Active, happy, begging for food. And eating a little bit. Maybe a quarter of a can of Fancy Feast each day, which obviously isn't much, but the trend seemed very good.

So Lucy's third vet appointment was yesterday. We reported that her eating was still poor, but improving (and saw that she'd lost a half-a-pound over the previous week, which she fortunately now *has* to lose, after we've finally got the prednisolone working for her).

And then we took her home and last night she was back to eating just a few bites at a time, no more than a minute at a food plate before she walked away.

Kimberly and I talked about it this morning, while I was not being very successful at working. One of the things that really disturbed us was that the fluids and anti-nausea drug we were giving her seemed to have NO direct correlation with when she begged for food and when she ate (as it were). I mean overall, there was improvement. But often it was just before or immediately after we gave her the anti-nausea pill (which is supposed to take an hour to two to take effect) that she was begging for food. We wondered if she wasn't actually nauseous, or if the drug just wasn't working.

So we wasted some time googling, and eventually just decided to call the vet and give him our impressions and say she was back to eating poorly.

He called back, said he really didn't know what was going on because her tests were all good, and made the same suggestion his daughter had last week: that we give her a feeding tube.

We were resistant last week because Lucy was doing so badly at the time, and it was super triggering because it reminded us of how badly Callisto was doing when we got her a feeding tube a year and a half ago and how much the poor baby fought us when we fed her. We didn't want to go through that again. We didn't want *everyone* to be that miserable especially if it was a lost cause.

But Lucy is now doing great other than the not-eating bit. She's happy, friendly, even seems in a bit better mood with the orangies, with them having to get a little closer to her before the growling starts. She's not hiding or trying to get away, not running a fever all the time.

Kimberly and I had a hard discussion and decided to get the feeding tube put into Lucy. That happened sometime this afternoon. We picked her up just before 4 and the vet tech demonstrated the feeding, which got Lucy probably more food than any day recently.

We'll try it ourselves in a little bit. (She probably needs 3-4 feedings a day). Hopefully it'll go as well.

But it's still triggering because of how miserable that last month (and that last week) was with poor Callisto.

--

Meanwhile I picked my folks up at the airport this afternoon, back from visiting their granddaughter in California. It was a good break because I wasn't getting much work done today.

So our routine is settling back to normal, and we'll have a bit more support out here again.

--

And I did finally manage some writing after I got home from that. The second section of Chapter 11 of This is Free Trader Beowulf. Hoping to get the third section sometime this weekend (just as a bit of catch-up) so that I can dive into a bigger history on Monday. (I'm going to run out of time this month, I'm afraid. But we'll see how my last four days of my own work go.)

Sigh. Poor Lucy has been pretty off the last few days.

She's actually not been eating well for a few months now. Not awful, but not particularly good. The new vet at Paradise wanted to see her anyway last month, before renewing her Prednisolone prescription, so we brought her in. The great news was that she was up to 7.5#, which is notable increase from her low weight of just under 5# (and probably her highest weight ever). And we got her a new prescription for some appetite stimulant, which we've given her before to solid effect. This time: not so much. She started eating a little more, but not the voracious little appetite that we'd seen last time.

Then about two months ago there was a night that she started throwing fits when picked up like it was hurting her. But she was OK by bedtime, so we didn't worry too much.

And she's been really crabby with the orangies since then, and so we've wondered if something was off.

But yesterday night was a whole new thing. She seemed lethargic during the day. Then she again started hissing and growling and mewing when picked up. Or even when we were too near her. And she didn't even want anything to do with treats, let alone food.

Kimberly and I were loathe to leave her alone as we went to bed, but we did. And then she hopped into bed with me about two hours later, purring and happy and seemingly totally herself. Then this morning she was eating treats again, though not food, but it was hard to tell if that was notable enough given her pickiness of recent months.

Nonetheless, we called up the vet this morning, because I have never seen her as bad off as she seemed to be last night. They initially gave her an appointment for a week and a half away, but then when the vet heard how she was doing, she asked me to "drop her off", which is how they fit in urgent, unscheduled appointments: drop off in the morning, pick up at night.

(Sidenote: We can go into the vet office now! Other than a few emergencies, that's the firs time that's been the case since we moved on island!)

We went through the same rigamarole that we have many times. They did lots of bloodwork on her, and it all came back normal except for a somewhat elevated white blood count, which the doctor said was expected given the long-term steroid use. And they gave her anti-nausea drugs and sub-cutaneous fluids and something (an anti-biotic I presume) in case she has gastritis.

I picked her up and she seemed active and annoyed in her cat carrier, a normal response to a vet visit. I dropped her off and she started pretty actively cleaning herself, because something they'd given her had gotten on her. And then I had to run to the other side of the island to pick up Kimberly.

Since I've been home she's been flat-out sleeping, which is not usual for a vet visit. Usually (since we've move on-island) she spends the rest of the day yowling at the door to the garage. I dragged her up her after dinner to give her some treats, and she refused those.

So she's off sleeping again.

We do have a follow-up appointment on Monday, another drop-off, and that's looking like it's going to be increasingly important.

I just hate when one of these things overlaps a weekend, since Paradise isn't even open on Sunday.

And I'm trying not to freak out, with only limited success, given the awful month we had with poor Callisto about a year and a half ago, when they were utterly unable to figure out what was wrong with her.

Since we never found out, I've occasionally worried that there might be some ticking time bomb that we just don't know about. There was talk of gastritis then too, and high white blood counts. But reading through my old journals, I see that poor Callisto was running a fever for the whole month. So probably not the same thing. Hopefully. Likely even.

Lucy *is* 16 years old, but they've never turned up anything worrisome at all. But as we learned last time around, never turning up the problem can be the worst thing of all.

Hopefully, Lucy just has some infection, and those shots will turn things around. But they haven't yet.